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Wednesday, 11 February 2015

(vol 2) Chapter 05: “Judgement Day”

2015 WORD COUNT = 6583
words

I’ve been taking part in Flash
Fiction contests for a little over seven months now and I can tell you that the
hardest part isn’t the story. It’s challenging, sure but it’s what you want to
do, it’s why you’re doing it.

No, the hardest part is at the
other end of the process. The hardest part is dealing with failure.

In its current state, Flash! Friday (the one I started
with) can produce almost a hundred stories a week. The chances of making the
cut and receiving a mention, a podium, or even the coveted win are slim. It’s a
tough few minutes when the link pops up on your twitter feed, leading you to the
results page, only to scan down and find you name is absent. A range of emotions hit you then as you wonder what went wrong and why your masterpiece wasn’t
given the recognition it deserved. Do the judges hate you? How were everyone
else’s stories better?

It’s not wrong to feel this way.
It’s a natural reaction. But what’s important is what you do next.

DON’T rant to the world about
injustice.

DO congratulate the winners / judges on a job well done.

DON’T give up writing because
of one bad week

DO turn that frustration into determination and get ready to
try harder the next week.

Because, at the end of the day,
the more contests you enter the more chances you’ll have. It’s all about the 'Rule of Alignment'. Let me explain.

There was a time when, even
though I’d received several mentions and a couple of second places, I honestly
thought I would never be good enough to get that win I wanted so desperately.
It didn’t matter how many nice comments my stories received week after week.
It didn’t matter that each second place was beaten by, in my opinion, a much
more deserved winner. I just wanted that win, as if that title meant that I
would finally be considered a good writer.

I never gave up though. Week in
and week out I plugged away. One story on a Friday became two, became another
contest and became another. And then, on a Monday night, not long after New
Year, while I was sat with my wife watching TV, I got the prize I’d been
chasing since June 2014.

All I wanted to do was track down
the judge for that week’s contest (you are in my will, Amy Woods) and give her
a big, big hug. I was only a week into 2015 and her decision to pick my story, ROLL BACK,
as the winner had made my year.

Despite hitting that top step I
looked back at the story I’d written and asked myself one question; why this
one. I'd had gut feelings about previous entries that I truly thought would be ‘the
one’ but a story about lost love and time travelling roller-skates was a little
bit absurd. When I posted it, I honestly didn’t think it had a chance. And
that’s when I discovered the 'Rule of Alignment'.

A judge is still a human being.
Sometimes it’s easy to look up at them and bow beneath their wisdom as they hand
out awards like bread to the starving. But they are just like you and me. No,
scratch that; the ARE you and me. All judges have lived lives filled
with books and music and films that they both love and hate. All it takes is
something in your story that speaks to a judge on another level, sparks a
memory, stands out to them. And you can’t write that on purpose unless you know
a judge as well as you know yourself.

You see it’s not personal. It’s
all about timing. You write a certain story based on a specific prompt for a
single judge week in and week out. There are probably only a handful of judges
who would have even considered my story that first week in January, let alone
pick it as their winner. A week earlier or a week later and there would have
been a different picture that took me down a different route, one that produced
a different story that didn’t speak to Amy.

So it’s all about alignment. All
three things coming together at the right time is what helped a little time
travelling, roller-skating love story come out on top.

Which brings me to the weekend
just past. That win led to a request from Rebecca, the host of Angry Hourglass,
to ask me if I’d consider judging. I’ll be honest and say that my first thought
was arrrgggghhhhh! I have the upmost respect for the judges in all writing
contests but I do not envy them one bit. These guys give up a fair bit of time
to read a whole lot of quality stories and then have to make decisions that upset
about 90% of the entrants because not everyone can be a winner. I hate it when
the results page of any contest I’ve entered seems to be missing my name
without explanation so why would I want to be on the reverse of that?

But then I thought better of it.
Part of this came from curiosity to see exactly what it was like on the other
side of the curtain. Most of it, however, came from the feeling that I owed it
to the community and, in particular, to every judge who had taken their
precious time to read one of my stories, whether it won or lost.

So, on Monday night I sat down at
my dining room table, pencil in one hand and highlighter in the other, and
proceeded to read the eleven entries for that week’s Angry Hourglass contest.

I’d worried briefly about an
absurd situation where none of the eleven stories spoke to me at all and
wondered how I could pick a winner from a bunch of tales that just didn’t
appeal to me. Or, worse still, what if all eleven stories were amazing. After
all, I’d written side by side with these authors for months and regularly found
myself in awe of their output.

But I couldn’t worry about that.
I couldn’t cross the bridge until I got to it and so I couldn’t worry about the
outcome until I read them all.

And so I read.

On the floor to my left several
piles appeared. Stories were read one at a time and then the order was
rearranged. One story would make me reconsider a previous one. Did I like it as
much? Was it better or worse than one I’d already had pegged for the podium.

Eleven stories read (some
re-read) and after much thought, I found that I had my three. And without
realising it, they were already in podium order.

It took a little while longer to
construct the article that would go up on the website as I’ve always struggled
with articulating why I like stuff. Usually it’s a gut feeling but I couldn’t
write out my favourites and follow them up with “I really liked it” three
times. However, I surprised myself when, by telling my wife what it was I liked
about them, I suddenly had the words I needed.

Still, while I was happy to come
out the other side of the process without a loss of sanity, I do feel a twinge
of regret that eight people would see the results page over the following
twenty four hours and probably curse my name. To those fellow writers I offer
my deepest apologies. To work hard on a story and not even be mentioned is a
feeling I know well. But like I’ve already said; it’s all about ‘Alignment’.
Some people may look at my final three and think ‘what was he thinking’. But each of those three hit something in me
that lays just beneath the surface and comes from 35 years of my own
individuality.

What I’m saying is, it’s not
personal and it doesn’t mean you’re not a good writer. It means one day you’ll
write a story for the perfect judge and they’ll love it. So put you losing
story to one side and move onto the next. Because that next one you write might
just be your winner.